Obama administration is actually doing through a memorandum issued Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services is allowing states to test more effective ways to move people who are in the welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, into the workforce and into economic independence—actually a bedrock conservative principle.

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Heritage Foundation Lies About Obama Welfare Reform Change

The Heritage Foundation today spread a falsehood about a change the Obama administration is instituting in the 1996 welfare reform law that has rapidly spread through the right-wing blogosphere. Letting Heritage and the right wing get away with this lie would do serious harm to people trying to pull themselves out of poverty.

"This is not a back-door way to get out of the work requirement," said Elizabeth Lower-Basch, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy. Instead, the explicitly states that the agency "is interested in more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry, retention, advancement, or access to jobs that offer opportunities for earnings and advancement that will allow participants to avoid dependence on government benefits."

"There was a growing consensus that the current work requirements were making people track a lot of things that waste a lot of time," Lower-Basch said, while not allowing states to give welfare recipients credit for taking steps that would actually help them get back to work, such as getting a GED if they dropped out of high school.

The whole point of the waiver rules is "building better programs to help people succeed," she said.

For one thing, they beg an obvious question: why would anyone oppose efforts to merely test whether there are better ways to connect people to jobs? For another, the complaints are coming from some of the same people who usually argue for giving states more power to run programs and who often seek state waivers in other programs.

Among other things, Pavetti writes that the waivers will "help to shift the focus of TANF employment programs from process and “bean counting” (whether recipients participate in programs) to outcomes (whether they actually find and keep jobs)." They will also help "encourage and support investments in education and training."

Late Friday The Huffington Post chronicled how presidential candidate Mitt Romney and congressional Republican leaders piled on to criticize the offer of waivers "despite the fact that Republican-led states sought the policy change." Utah was one of the leading states pushing for these waivers.

One of the governors who had been seeking waivers from HHS from welfare work requirements was conservative Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. But that waiver, rejected by the Obama administration, was for a state that had been cutting its funding for work support programs for welfare recipients and which was facing a federal fine for not meeting its work requirements for welfare recipients since 2006.

While this was happening "poverty rates in Ohio have climbed for over a decade," with one in 10 Ohio children living in a family that is below the poverty line, wrote Jon Honeck, public policy director for The Center for Community Solutions in a commentary in the Columbus Dispatch last month. "With some help for work-related supports, a family can be put on the road to self-sufficiency, which was the original goal of TANF. Lifting families and children out of extreme poverty should be a priority, not an afterthought."

The intent of the HHS memorandum is clear to anyone who reads it, and it is impossible to read into the plain language of the memorandum anything that smacks of "the end of welfare reform." So is the intent of the campaign against it: to keep "welfare reform" from being anything other than grudgingly given crumbs given in a way that punishes poor people for being poor.

The disinformation being spread by Heritage and the right-wing commentariat on this one is of the "pants on fire" variety, more proof that the conservative establishment will go to any length to demonize all things Obama while avoiding intelligent, fact-based discussion of economic policy.

The House can sock it to students, reduce or cancel your Medicare, your Social Security check, no more COLAs, eliminate the EPA, the SEC, the Department of Education, the banking commission, food stamps, Medicaid, Student Aid, the Post Office, Health Care and dozens others; lay off police, firemen, teachers, park rangers using the savings to pay for the deep cuts to the 1% and corporations proposed by Romney and Paul Ryan, but it won’t reduce the deficits and the Debt. More years of Bush’s tax cuts to the millionaires will create more Romney-like billionaires, but ruin the nation.

Romney's policies will pare away at the 1% because the 99% will have been bled dry. Those people at the "rich/poor" cutoff line are the ones being sized up to be on the feast menu. These borderline rich are foolish enough to think they are being invited to the feast as guests, and do not see they are main course.

This article acusing the Heritage Foundation of "lies" does not look correctly at the article which has one primary point - the law in question was passed by Congress with specific language about NO WAIVERS. The discussion of waiver requests and denials does not cover this Congressional note in the law.

Here are the words from Heritage Foundation:

"Now, Obama’s HHS is claiming that it can waive those work requirements that are at the heart of the law, and without Congress’s consent."

"When it established TANF, Congress deliberately exempted or shielded nearly all of the TANF program from waiver authority. They explicitly did not want the law to be rewritten at the whim of HHS bureaucrats. In a December 2001, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service clarified that there was no authority to override work and other major requirements: “Effectively, there are no TANF waivers,” it reported."

KeithWerner - Having worked for the welfare system for 26 years it is almost impossible to believe that things are unchanged since 2001. (about work requirements) Change occurs almost daily, it seems. Not major changes of course, but there LOTS of them in relatively short time periods. Frankly, most welfare rules are pandering to public opinion and to confuse the public. The two elephants in the room that NO ONE will discuss are (1) if you really need welfare, it isn't enough and (2) no will come out and say it was a HUGE mistake to extend welfare to unmarried persons and the corollary to that is we do not hold people responsible for choices. If neither parent has a job and has never had a job, we should NOT be setting them up in housekeeping, paying for a house, appliances etc.

Work requirements which often translate into going to busy-work classes, producing resumes and sending applications (probably by hundreds of welfare clients to the same 10 job openings!) are simply punitive or gate keeping measures to make clients jump through hoops to get benefits. By all means, help people who need help, but stop funding a welfare culture.

The Heritage Foundation has minions (sorry loyal party members) working overtime (unpaid of course) at the Ministry of Truth to keep up with Mr Obama implementing (or wanting to) their policies. Please, Heritage Foundation never supported welfare reform, they always supported the war in Iran, or is it Iraq (quick check before the Thought Police find out we aren't sure), they show up full of spit and vinegar to the Two Minutes of Hate and look forward to the Hate Week Festival.

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